The providing of expertise or specialist advice. Consulting performed by auditors tends to focus on improvements to procedures and processes, in contrast to *compliance auditing. The tensions between consulting and compliance for auditors have been described as follows: "The nub of the behavioural challenge of internal auditing is that internal auditors are both inspectors and advisors. They have these two roles which are in conflict with each other...If an auditor were to jettison the inspectorial role, the auditor would become an internal management consultant only and *management would have lost a key element of their *internal auditing function. If the auditor were to jettison the advisory role, the auditor would become merely an authoritarian inspector and much of the practical benefit which would usually result from internal auditing work would be lost.. .The answer to internal audit role conflict invariably is not to drop one of the conflicting roles" (Ridley and Chambers, 1998, 186-187, emphasis in original).
Further reading: McCall (2002); Williams (2003)

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